Another Quick Stay

After three weeks off, we returned to our home away from home for a quick overnight stay.  Before leaving after the Thanksgiving weekend, we thought we would be returning this weekend and set our new programmable thermostat to return to its normal heating schedule on Friday, 12/16.  If it was not for that, we probably would not have come up due to all the work we had to do in the valley to get ready for the holidays, but it gave us a chance to look at the new workshop which Craig and Bob started building this week.

The house was nice and toasty when we arrived since the heat kicked in at 4pm and we arrived around 6:30pm.  We saw a glimmer of the new building in the darkness, but not enough to get a real feeling for what had been accomplished.  We went to the newly opened 260 Cafe for dinner with a PaysonDealz.com coupon that we purchased last week.  We had heard the place had changed hands, which was the reason for the remodel, but did not know it now belonged to the woman who used to manage Payson's Restore (Habitat for Humanity store that we frequently shop at).  There was only one other couple in the place, but we had an excellent dinner of prime rib and walleye with strawberry-rhubarb pie and cheesecake for dessert.  The decor is no longer a 50's design, but has more of a warm homey feeling.  It was a great time and we will be definitely be back.

Saturday was a short stay as we had tickets in the valley to see a movie at 2:45pm.  With the light of day we were able to see the snow that remained in our backyard and the awesome structure that is our workshop.  It is much more impressive than any of the fabricated sheds we considered buying from Home Depot or the other "kit" place in Star Valley.  The walls are 8' and the attic has a 5' center.  We had called Craig the night before and he and Bob were planning on taking advantage of the nice weather to get more work done on the building today.  They arrived around 8:30am and started to work on finishing the siding and attic floor.

Leftover snow and the new shed

View from our bedroom (metal shed will be going away)

View from the patio

Laurie scoping out the new construction

Future window on west wall

Future door on south wall (on the left)

Future home of roll-up door

Lots of storage space with a five foot center

While they did their work, we made a trip to Neumann's Paints to get another gallon of primer which should allow us to finish the last two rooms during the holiday break.  Since I am off the week between Christmas and New Year's, I will stay up here that week to finish the primer and then do a top coat on the ceilings (poor Laurie has to work that week and will miss all the fun).  We also picked up the paint for the shed.  Originally Laurie wanted to paint the shed the same color as the house, but then decided she did not want to look out the back windows at a huge (the shed is about 14 feet tall) teal building.  So, with Neumann's help, we picked a gray-green color that should blend in with the trees in the backyard.  If we like the color on the shed, we will use it when we paint the exterior of the house.  We made one trip to Home Depot to pick up some more extra roofing shingles for the shed. While we were there, we looked at ceramic tile to find some possible choices for our flooring.

We were back by noon and started to work on winterizing the house.  I read more about this process from various sources which advised not turning off the thermostat as it could cause problems with electronic components and the refrigerator and cause mold/mildew issues.  So I set the thermostat on hold at 45 degrees for 104 days.  This will give us the flexibility to come up whenever we want and I do not have to reprogram the unit.  It will not be as warm in the house for our next arrival, but that will be better than running up a huge electric bill because we set the heat to 68 degrees and then ended up not making it up. I also found that it is not a good idea to leave the hot water heater full, even if the thermostat is set to a low temperature, so I drained the hot water heater and the water from the pipes.  After adding the RV coolant to the traps, we were ready to hit the road.  We left Craig and Bob working on the shed and cannot wait to see how it looks next time.

Stats: 2 Home Depot trips; 0 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 11/28-12/17: $3,414
Remodeling expense to date: $38,715